The first week was about proving something simple: that a QA engineer with 10 years of experience but minimal Python could get moving fast when the goal was concrete.
The goal for week 1 was to master Python string manipulation and build prompt-formatter, a reusable prompt template engine.
What I Built
prompt-formatter - a Python package for LLM prompt template handling.
It does four things:
- Template creation with variable substitution
- Input validation (empty checks, length limits, keyword blocking)
- Response cleaning utilities
- Helper functions for token estimation and list formatting
It ships as a proper package with __init__.py, tests, and examples. Not a script. A package.
The Honest Takeaway
I lost an hour to this:
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'prompt_formatter'
Root cause: Python’s module search path did not include my package directory. Three ways to fix it, and the simplest one I found last: just run pytest instead of python3. pytest adds the current directory to the path automatically.
That kind of thing sticks. I will not forget how Python imports work now.
The other thing I learned: week 1’s mini-project required concepts from weeks 3 and 4. Functions, classes, __init__.py, **kwargs. The roadmap is honest about this - week 1 goes deeper than the syllabus says, because building something real always does.
What’s Next
Week 2: Data structures. Lists, dicts, sets. Building a test case manager that stores data in memory.